Data drives decisions. When you have access to all sorts of information, you simplify the decision-making for managers and stakeholders. There are 2 major benefits of documentation that substantiate it: one; that it ensures every task of the project is completed and two, traceability which means leaders can track who is assigned to what task and their progress.

Project management aims at streamlining project planning and preventing project bottlenecks. It juggles around various attributes simultaneously such as project tasks, resources and project schedule. Project managers need to be on their toes to align tasks with client needs and meet deadlines. That’s when a project documentation template comes in handy. It encompasses every project detail from project tasks to the progress of the task.

A project documentation template led by excel lets you input every project detail that entails to project’s progress and deliverables. Let’s have a look at the components of the template:

Project name

It begins with the basic details to know what project you’re working on. When you are working on multiple projects, just typing out the project’s name will bring the template in front of you.

Project manager

Knowing who’s leading the project is crucial for the stakeholders and clients. In other words, who is taking charge of the project and leading matrixed teams. Hence the project manager’s name is important to be recorded on documents.

Basic details

This is the section where you can record each and every task undertaken at various stages of the project. From conceptualizing to releasing the project, every step of the project can be explained further and bifurcated into sub-tasks. For example, when you initiate a project, you draw all the finances, list out prerequisites of the project and chalk out the project structure. All of these steps are recorded under this section which increases the project’s traceability making it easier for managers.

Progress

You can input your task’s progress using any scale. For instance, if it’s in percentage scale, you can view the progress in percentage bars using conditional formatting. Documenting a task’s progress helps you stay on track and take corrective measures if otherwise.

Allocated resource

It’s imperative for project managers to know who’s the allocated resource for a certain task to track his/her progress and manage the schedule. Hence recording resource details are crucial when documenting a project.

Department

The department of the allocated resource makes it easier for project managers to collaborate with them. They don’t have to put an extra effort to look across departments and waste time. Moreover, to cope with unplanned leaves, you can update the sheet with substitute departmental resources who can take up the task.

Project completion date

One of the most important aspects of project documentation is the completion date as it gives clarity if the project is on track. If not, managers can recuperate and stay on schedule to meet the deadlines.

All of the above-mentioned details help the manager channelize critical thinking and think through every aspect of his project. Not only that, but a project documentation template is also a memory repository that lets you manage details that are likely to be missed when not reported. Furthermore, decision-makers, clients and stakeholders are well-informed about the project’s progress and changes made if any. However, updating this template will become complex when you have multiple projects in line. So to simplify it, subscribing to a project management tool will work wonders and will increase the efficiency of your project management cycle.

Identifying each project’s Key Performance Indicators (KPI) is the first step towards creating the project metrics to score its overall performance.

When all parameters are compiled into a project management dashboard, it’s easier to see what is working and what needs to be corrected. In other words, you know the actions you’ll need to take, thus making informed decisions concerning the execution of future work.

A project KPI report template records actual and forecasted financial statuses and lets you compare expenses incurred against profits generated. This way, you can keep tabs on yearly budget goals, and whether any remaining costs will have to be recalled or repurposed according to the projects’ priority. The first of many questions you’d have concerning a KPI report sample is;

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What does a KPI Template Dashboard contain?

A KPI template in excel comprises of data on departmental projects, which include the type of activity under a particular project, percentage of completion, and financial status. This can be further broken down to;

Project Name: Simply put, the name of the project a department takes up which is an indicator of the resources to be sourced ahead of time.

Budget: This relies on cost estimation techniques within the project budget plan to attach a cost to each department.

Net Expenses: This indicates the expense of each department incurs when carrying out the project.

Revenue: This column displays the goals for profits to be generated and the actual profits realized.

Profit Margin: The profit margin is the difference between actual and estimated profits made, indicating the extent of expenses recovered after the project is delivered.

Key performance indicators templates contain a project management dashboard that supplies information on the tasks within a project. It compiles progress and gives an indication of the project’s priority – whether low, medium, or high.

While it doesn’t record the actual reasons behind task delays, it lets you assess the project from a broader perspective. You can then plan and fit in work such that high-priority tasks aren’t left unfinished for extended periods of time.

What’s more, a KPI dashboard template lets you extract this data and convert it into the graphical format of your choosing. From a bar-graph that indicates progress statuses for each task to line graphs that establish how closely a project is following timelines, the ideal KPI tracking template arms you with sufficient insights to reach project decisions.

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Basics of a project management KPI template

A KPI summary lets project managers set realistic goals for individual project teams regarding their work performance. After all, the right skills can not only fast track work but also keeps workloads optimal. The product revenue breakdown tab in a KPI dashboard excel template holds the following information:

Product revenue – Spread across the calendar year, product revenue captures the financial returns each departmental project has produced.

Revenue Breakdown – the annual revenue for each department is expressed as a percentage.

Wins / Losses: This is a percentage indication of how many projects performed favorably, or unfavorably as the case may be.

Time-to-Market: Any firm’s time-to-market strategy tells you the time remaining, or the number of days for product release.

Given how important it is to have these KPIs in a central location, it is not surprising why a lot of time and energy is expended when creating a project KPI report template. Download it today to see how the particulars mentioned in this post work within the template!

Documentation of the various activities is therefore considered to be a critical process for the project. As a part of the assessment stage, noting the level of progress, is mandatory before taking any decisions which affect the future of the project.

Using a tool at this stage helps to get the basics of project management, which can help you ease into a resourcing tool in the future.

Having said that, let’s take a look at the different parts of a project status report.

Project Status Report Particulars

An ideal project status report would include details of the different tasks to be completed as a part of the project. It should also have details of the different resources working on the project. This can include the department they’re attached to, billable skills and location of the project.

A good example of the project status report is the one which can answer which steps are to be taken in the future. Based on whether specific tasks are delayed or have been completed in time, better decisions can be taken for the future.

There are many versions of status report template available online easily. A simple search online would show that these templates are abundantly available. However, they might vary depending on the type of project that has been used for the template. For this reason, we have created a template which is adaptable to any kind of project.

With a precise recording of when and how the tasks are completed, it would help these stakeholders take better decisions in the long run.

The necessary parts of a project status report template include:

Task details

This is the list of detailed tasks and deliverables that are required to be completed as a part of the project. They may be divided into multiple stages, such as the conceptualisation, planning and activity stages. Tasks can also be aligned based on their priority so that the resources can be alerted. The priorities per task can be set from high to low, ensuring the right resources are deployed to keep track of timelines. The more detailed this section of the report is, the better will the project details be captured.

Planned dates

The planning stages of the project is extremely critical and of the most importance to managers, stakeholders, and even the clients. This is because it decides the actual timeline of the project, and highlights when the project will be completed. The planned starting and end dates would highlight the actual time for each task and sub-tasks to be completing, depending on the type of report.

Actual dates

These are the actual dates when different tasks are completed. They show the actual timeline for the tasks and when they are completed. Depending on the timeline of the project, you can opt for monthly, or even weekly status reports. When compared against the planned dates, it gives whether the project is on track or not.

Budget and expenditure details

This would include the expected and actual expenditure on the project. An expected figure is marked in the project management plan, which helps get an idea of the total cost of the project. As the project progresses, an expenditure overview can be made at every stage of the project. This would help in identifying whether estimates have been made correctly or not.

Task status

This would give a brief overview of the project task stages. Stages would ideally include whether the task has been completed, delayed, in progress, or has not started on time. This gives an indication of where the project bottlenecks are, and it can be avoided accordingly.

Owner and assigned resources

This would indicate who is in charge of the project stages. In case of any delays or queries, the person in charge can clarify questions for the different stakeholders. The assigned resources are the list of resources responsible for completing the tasks.

Project risk details

This is an important part of the project management status report. It would include a description of the different risks in the project. This would include a list of the key risks and dependencies, their probability, impact, details, and the person in charge of risk management. The estimated and actual dates for the project risks would help manage how much time was actually covered to complete the tasks.

This section can be populated in two different ways. Assumed risks to the project can be listed out with their expected probability and the impact it is going to create. Another way is to populate the section as the project progresses.

Keys and legends

The legend for the different categories will be highlighted in this section. This would include the different stages of project completion, risk probability, and the impact of the risks.

The project status template can be a useful reckoner to take stock of the progress of the project. It can especially be useful when there are complex projects to handle. However, issues may arise when you have many of these complex projects to handle.

It is in such cases that a resource management tool would come in handy. It would also help in maintaining a single interface among multiple stakeholders, leading to a unique information source.

Project timeline template in Excel can come in as a much-needed support when you are overburdened with work. By entering details such as resources, dates and other details, you can get a clear picture of the status of the project.

A simple search on the internet would reveal a large and confusing array of project management templates. However, it is best to keep things simple when you’re thinking of using a project management template for the first time. And the easiest way to create a project management template in Excel.

Read on to know how you can go about making your first template.

Project Timeline Template in Excel

The ideal project management timeline template would look like a simplistic version of the project management dashboards that are usually available online. Most importantly, the project manager and other key stakeholders should be able to make sense of the timeline and the data that they are looking at.

The main idea behind a free project timeline template is to streamline tasks and their details, and put them in one place. The different resources that are allocated for the projects are also visible in one sheet, which makes it easier to keep track of them. With the planned project start and end dates, and completion percentages, you can also mark how much of the work gets done. As a result, you can make better decisions concerning the reallocation of resources to certain tasks.

Let’s take a look at the different heads that are there in the Excel-based project management timeline template.

Serial Number

This is critical to mark out the different steps that are required in the project. Your project may be divided into different stages, especially for long-drawn out assignments. Every task and their sub task, should be numbered for clarity.

Event

This records the different assignments to be completed under the project. Depending on the level of importance of the tasks, you can stack them accordingly, using the “Group” function under the “View” column.

For example, a particular stage would have different tasks, and each task would have different sub-tasks. Tasks will be stacked together at a level lower than Stages, and Sub-tasks at a lower level than Tasks. They will be coloured accordingly as well.

Assigned To

This section will have the details of who is in charge of each of the events in the project.

In larger projects, there will be assistant managers for each stage of the project, who will be in charge of their own set of resources, and to carry out the different tasks. Listing the resources out makes it easily visible for stakeholders. As a manager, you would easily be able to identify who to contact in case of bottlenecks.

Start and End Dates

This would indicate the planned start and end dates for the execution of the different stages, tasks, and sub-tasks of the project. You can keep updating revised dates as and when they change once the project commences.

Duration

The duration of each of the stages of work would be automatically calculated once each of these tasks have been assigned start and end dates. Once all tasks and subtasks have been listed, you can gauge if the duration is ideal or not. Based on the discussions with your resources, you can make changes accordingly to your schedule.

Completion Percentage

This is the section which would be populated as the project progresses. The amount of work completed, and the start and end dates, you can enter a completion percentage for each of the tasks. This would be based on the amount of work completed by the expected end date for the activity.

Once you know the percentage, you can decide to allocate more time to unfinished tasks or assign more resources to the tasks which are falling behind on the timeline.

Gantt Chart

This is the pictorial representation of the overall project timeline. The coloured bars show the time taken for each of the tasks. Depending on the overall distribution of tasks, you can reallocate resources or adjust the time accordingly. This chart would also become a ready reckoner at meetings.

Now that you know the data held within a project timeline template , you can start using this Excel-based guide for different projects. Once the complexity of projects increases, you can consider upgrading to a resource management tool.

Besides being highly customisable, an application that comes with a business intelligence dashboards offers deeper analysis on your staff utilisation and project management in the long run.

When managing projects, seasoned managers are all too aware of the importance of continuous project trackers.

Taking your eye off a particular project for even a few days can risk any and all constraints overrunning severely, after all.

This explains why every project management tool contains tracking reports, be it a task, expense, fund allocation, or even vacancies/gaps between running and pending projects. Besides ensuring the project in question stays on track, a project progress tracker also warns you of extensions and threats.

Despite the plethora of tools and dashboards, it’s wise to get the basics right and play around with a project tracker excel template. This brings us to how a project management dashboard looks like in an excel program. Keep scrolling!

Project management dashboard in excel

Excel’s claim to fame in project management is the diversity of formula. The trouble though, is that spreadsheets can be altered to such an extent that tracking changes, while possible, can be exceedingly time-consuming.

What’s more, the sheet should mimic a project management dashboard such that you are able to understand what a project manager looks at when assessing data. A project tracker is remarkably easy to create, edit and return to at any point in time. And here are some of the features you can expect to see in one;

Project tracking

Essentially, the parameters of a project tracking tool revolve around activities listed in the work breakdown structure, which is further fragmented into tasks.

Tracking tasks lets users see which tasks began early, on time or late, and consequently, the effect it has on their finish times.

This measure lets you improve project time management by building a schedule that is not only comprehensive but has resources who are competent, knowledgeable, and available for the entire duration of work at hand.

Task

The tasks are recorded to break the project down to the essentials. Besides identifying the type of project and resources needed to be allocated to it, a systematic order to tasks ensures that no activity is left out accidentally.

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Task type

The type of task identifies priorities before assigning them to generic resources.

Status

This column lets users know if the task has just been created, assigned, done, removed, due, or past their due date.

Priority

Task priorities make recording it simpler and more effective. It assigns a weighting to each task in the list and pushes high and medium priority tasks first so that less time is wasted.

Assignee

The assignee column refers to the staff member who will take up the task and remain accountable for its progress. The allotment is based on skills, experience, department, and location.

Assigned date

This date marks the allocation of a task to a particular staff in order to generate realistic timelines and effort estimates.

Deadlines

Task deadlines are intended to alert project and resource managers alike of delays and bottlenecks that force the next tasks in line to be pushed back further.

Estimated hours

Planned hours are an approximation of the number of hours a task is estimated to take and forms an integral part of the best project management excel templates.

Start date

Post assignment, the start date is the date work begins.

Expected end date

The plausible end date is b

ased on the total number of estimated hours and this is the timeframe by which a task’s status should change from due to done.

Percentage done

The project progress tracker’s cornerstone lies in the percentage done, which gives users an indication of how much is done versus how much remains. It is a visual representation of the task’s progress.

Actual hours

These hours are the actual available hours utilized by resources while working on a specific task. Depending on the task’s scale of complexity and time, these hours can be longer or shorter than the estimated hours.

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With this preview of the project tracker template’s workings, you can take that leap of faith you’ve been considering. Even better, you’ll know what part of this database is managed more intuitively by a resource management tool, thus giving you the best of both worlds; one where you get the basics right, and another where you save time crunching data and acting on the results a sophisticated tool generates instantly!

More importantly, it lets project managers apply organizational resources to project activities such that no single task suffers from a surplus or shortage of critical resources.

Considering that a project has several stakeholders involved, competing (and sometimes conflicting) interests are to be expected. After all, different aspects of the project would be of interest.

For example, the financier would want an account of the costs involved, while the project management office would want to know how the portfolio is doing, in terms of the project’s activities, work packages and effort hours. The onus is then on the project manager to assemble teams based on their schedules, skills relevance, competencies and availability.

A project charter template briefs concerned person(s) of the project’s constraints, budgetary allocations and defined outcomes in order to manage expectations reasonably well. You’ll then bid for the right projects in the years to come, while maintaining the project deadlines. When you’re drafting a project charter, the first question springing to your mind would be:

What are the necessary components of a project charter?

Title

While it may seem like a trivial element, titling the project lets management surmise the project’s nature, scale and complexity.

Overview

This is the section where the reasoning behind taking the project up is documented. The purpose of the overview is to lend managerial support and authorizing both the project and project manager.

It covers the complete project management life cycle along with the mission statement, beneficial gains and broad strokes of both deliverables and milestones expected to be achieved.

Project Budget

While all costs may be difficult to ascertain in a project’s initiation stage, creating an estimated cost-ceiling prevents you from under or over-spending the project fund. It establishes a cost baseline that governs when and where funds are to be released in accordance with the resources (technical and human) needed.

Scope

The project scope document is prepared on the guidelines listed in the project charter. It highlights project risks in terms of constrained resources in terms of the costs, time, people and data available,. This way, should any changes be suggested or introduced once the project’s underway, project managers can draw back to this original scope to assess where modifications can be feasibly injected.

The scope also lists the project’s limitations, to prevent mismanaging project spends or over-committing critical resources.

Milestones to be met/reached

Once the project is formally authorized, its milestones or project management phases are outlined based on task dependencies as well as the time and complexity per activity. This section is the route to syncing resource schedules to the project calendars such that tasks are doable yet keep your staff optimally challenged. In other words, it sets realistic expectations based on how much can be reached within specified timelines.

Deliverables

Deliverables, or product outcomes, refer to the finished and/or promised product in terms of its quality and functionality. Based on how many project milestones were successfully completed, or conversely, which ones consumed more time, resources or costs, a prototype or Beta-version of the project can be visualized.

Resources Requested

Given that the right competencies and expertise has to match availability and utility rates, project resource requirements along with their quantity and quality are documented here. This ensures that all hands are on deck ahead of the curve. This way, you aren’t forced into making last-minute judgment calls on a team’s suitability for the project in question.

Risk Entries

It’s a known fact that all projects carry risks. This section is further broken down to unknown and known risks and serves as an early version of the project risk log. It profiles risks by their severity, impact, areas affected and mitigative measures that would need to be taken to either contain, resolve it completely and even prevent them from recurring in the future.

While additional project charter components being added to the template is subject to its ability to clarify the project’s objectives, deadlines roles and responsibilities and Return on Investment (ROI), the vital elements listed here not only render your charter complete but can also win your project a Sponsor to back you up when the time comes to bid for promising projects with RFPs (Request for Proposals).

Isn’t it about time you downloaded your free project charter template to get initiated into the fascinating world of project management?

So,who amongst us wouldn’t want to, quite literally, get a bang for the buck?

Project and resource managers would answer this question through workforce efficiency. After all, team performances govern how your projects fared. Your constant vigil over project health would be focused on preventing schedules and costs from ballooning uncontrollably.

No one appreciates being handed a schedule that’s subjected to change constantly. But keeping your teams informed of the likelihood of change ahead of the curve lets them determine if they can still fulfill their tasks within stipulated deadlines. What’s more, it alerts them to scheduling conflicts that can risk people missing the point to mission-critical tasks altogether.

without involving your teams closely in the costing process, you’d fall short of the goal to provide quality service at affordable rates. Your resources would have to cost their effort investments against the time left in their working hours to know if the entire project is on track and within budget. This often spells disaster as you’d have to hire expensive contracts in the last minute or compromise on the deliverable itself with repeated extensions.

Let’s get right to the nitty-gritties of the template with a simple glossary that won’t ‘gloss’ over the essentials!

Definitions in Controlled Cost Management Key to Calculating Variances

As the name implies, earned value is the money to be earned from work that gets completed. It translates project milestones to financial units and is calculated by multiplying the percentage of completed work with the budgeted actual cost. A few other terms you’re going to come across are:

Planned Value: Better known as the time-phased cost baseline, the planned value is the Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS).The total budgeted cost established per task is compared against this value.

Actual Cost: All accounted-for costs siphoned onto different tasks of a particular work package, it is determined as the cost to earn related value.

Cost Variance (CV): This is a verifiable account of work costs in comparison to the planned cost. The difference between the earned value and actual cost gives you a project’s Cost Variance. i.e. EV – AC. While some projects eat up all of the budget and others risk overshooting the proposed ceiling, an ideal scenario would be if the project fell under allocated costs.
The cost variance corresponds to a negative value for projects exceeding the budget and produces a positive value if it stays within the financial limit. Monitoring project cost variance is critical to ensuring the project is delivered on budget.

Schedule Variance (SV): The schedule variance refers to how your team’s schedules were affected. It is computed by calculating the difference between the earned value and the planned value, i.e. EV – PV. If your teams are ahead of schedule, their progress is marked by a positive number on the schedule variance. Conversely, if your teams exceeded proposed timelines by reworking or switching up tasks that took longer than expected your schedule variance produces a negative value. Monitoring the Schedule Variance is critical to delivering the project on-time.

Variance Percentage: Given how it computes budgetary implications, Earned Value Management forewarns project manage of cost or schedule fluctuations with the variance percentage, which aggregates the variance calculated. This value showcases how much of the cost was actually utilized against planned value.

Given that automation makes life easier, you wouldn’t spend hours tracking changes on this particular template. But it’s worth remembering that longevity plays a pivotal role in taking your business forward. As familiar as you may be with Excel, remember the saying,’ familiarity breeds contempt’?

After all, today’s spreadsheet template can’t guarantee future success owing to its limitations protecting the very data you’re trying to standardize. Added to which, not everyone possess the same comfort level working around spreadsheets.
While a template is a safe route to digitizing your project’s budget plan, you’d do well to explore sophisticated product suites like Saviom ERM. Combine unlimited visibility, voluminous storage and secure access and you give yourself the advantage of  simplicity while sustaining your business model.

So go ahead, download this project-centric Earned Value Template. But stay several steps ahead of the competition with a tour of our solutions!

While a good indicator of a project’s success is its ability to fulfil your client’s expectations while remaining on time and budget, it bodes well for you if it stays under your original cost estimate. Forecasting cost estimates lets you control your activities such that potential overruns can be rectified ahead of the curve. i.e.if one area is expected to exceed, other activities should try falling within the project budget plan.

Whether you’re an accidental or experienced project manager, project budgeting comes as naturally to you as breathing. That being said, there’s always a simplified learning journey much like the cost management template embedded in this post. So let’s get right to it!

The 5 Activity Cost Estimation Tools

A complete project budget plan comprises of credibility, analytical accuracy and sustainability. But what truly lets you produce an effective cost baseline are the activity cost estimation techniques you employ to control costs within project cost management. Moreover, experiential judgment hand in hand with historical information lets you select and combine cost estimation techniques, minimizing the variance between your planned and actual costs. Here’re 5 activity cost estimation tools worth drilling down to:

  1. Analogous Estimating

The analogous estimating technique relies on historical information from your project archives that have been sorted out by cost and work packages. While it’s more reliable if your projects are similar in nature and complexity, it nevertheless has its uses regardless of the stage your project is in. For instance, you can develop initial estimates during the project discussion rounds. You can even use it to estimate the duration of your teams’ work packages and that of the project in its entirety. It can be deployed by:

1. Identifying deliverables on prior projects which include its scope, cost and deliverables.
2. Factoring in your teams expertise, confidence and skills that was used on the projects that were previously completed. The accuracy of your estimates can help you adjust cost data.
3. Forming a consensus to base your business case from the cost and work estimates.

It may take a while to consolidate your historic project data, especially when gathering input from people who’ve worked on previous such projects. But the advantage of documenting an extensive project archive is that your estimates are based on a comprehensive breadth of factual and experiential evidence.

  2. Parametric Estimating

A parametric estimate relies on a large body of information from which future cost predictions are made. It establishes a quasi-statistical relationship between similar variables used on prior projects and raw data from credible paths of information, such as project case studies. The parametric estimation can be calculated by identifying the number of units of a project activity and its unit cost. If the productivity rate of the resources who worked on previous projects is a known entity, then the formula can be modified as follows:
Activity cost= unit of work/ productivity rate of the resource.

  3. Three Point Estimating

This technique, popularly known as PERT (Program Evaluation And Review Technique) is a win-win for both your project teams and yourself because it makes use of situational judgment. It is a three-step process that takes into consideration your team member’s take on the most likely, optimistic and pessimistic scenarios likely to occur. The first step in this approach is to tally up the pros and cons of the risks associated with each task. As Dick Billows puts it, a positive risk is associated with the task finishing earlier than expected while negative risks are factors that lengthen your tasks.

Your staff’s best guess is the most likely estimate or the average amount of work the task takes up if it was repeatedly undertaken. The last step to the 3-point technique is to calculate the mean and standard deviation of your cost estimate to give you the weighted mean:
O+4*ML+P/6= weighted mean
P-O/6=Standard Deviation

Where O signifies the Optimistic scenario and P=Pessimistic/negative scenario and ML=Most Likely scenario.
The weighted mean from the 3 estimates is the figure you embed into your resources’ work packages which accounts for the impact any positive or negative risk may impose.

   4. Reserve Analysis

Since every project carries risks inherently, introducing a buffer proves beneficial in classifying known and unknown entities. The two types of reserves used in project management are contingency and management reserves.

Known risks have corresponding risk response values that are entered into the risk register. The funding for these responses come from contingency reserves which lets you finalize your cost baseline. It contains a specific monetary or time spends set aside to prevent risks from overrunning. Management reserves, on the other hand, adds this cost baseline to the estimate off the originally planned corpus fund. This is your ultimate project budget.

For example, if a project manager proposes that a project budget would amount to USD 120,000 and adds a 10% contingency reserve, the total cost baseline would equal the original estimate as well as the contingency reserve,i.e
120,000+0.1*120,000=132000.

This figure is the benchmark signifying how your project’s overall cost performance would turn out. The Reserve Analysis estimation technique can be used, reduced or even completely removed as the project phases out. Reserve analysis sits at the core of risk management in the 6th edition of the PMBOK guide. Which is why test takers will find additional value in these quick tips as they certify their way into the realm of true project management!

   5. Bottom-up Estimation

This is the most commonly used approach owing to its accuracy and ability to factor in the human element. Although it is a time- consuming affair, it follows a cyclic process that involves your teams more closely, thus fostering a stronger commitment towards the project. It lets your teams measure their work by estimating both costs and duration.

The Bottom-Up approach is a three-step process which works from the lowest level of detail in the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The first step is to work closely with individual team members and develop a detailed Work package that includes the task breakdown and deliverables. Not only does it manage expectations but describes the risks that could potentially affect the task at hand. Work packages prevent the scope from expanding by adjusting the padding made to estimates.

Once your team understands what is expected of them, you can develop the actual cost estimates using either the 3 Point or analogous estimation tools. While the former points out the uncertainties associated with each estimates, the latter informs your staff of the changes that can reopen the estimating process.

Now that you know what goes into creating a cumulative totalling of your costs per work package, you can strategically map out your cost management plan that comprehensively informs your project teams of where costs can be saved for use on later projects. The unifying element in the estimation techniques discussed here in detail is how your experiential judgment evolves with time. Simply put, as you climb up the project management ladder, you can trust your instincts to identify and collect parameters to reach near-accurate estimates!

We’re curious; Did downloading this project cost management template help you pivot your project budget plan towards success?

This way, you manage to accomplish so much more in a shorter time frame, entitling you to bask in the glow of your own productivity. Besides, with a project plan template that clubs your talent pool and viable projects together, the scales of efficiency tip in your favor.

As far as projects are concerned, both people and deliverables matter. Without a work ready task force already on board, you can’t approve new projects. The right skills, qualifications and experience is the winning formula for project success. Therefore, an overview of where this trifecta lies around your firm gives you more than a ‘guesstimate’ of your resource efforts to rely on.

A project plan template not only quantifies these effort estimates but also lets you track engagement levels at various points in time. What’s more, it helps you get comfortable working with data around. Let’s begin with the benefits you’ll get before progressing to the columns you can expect to work with when you download your project plan template!

The Benefits of Gauging People and Projects in Real-Time

Irrespective of whether you’re a beginner, intermediate or advanced Excel user,
A project plan template lets you combine the core principles of project and resource management before migrating your resource pool to a specialized ERM product suite.
A brief snapshot of the benefits you reap from tracking both project and resource progress in one place include:

• Allocating and rescheduling your staff such that excessive free-time is optimally utilized.
• Picking out star performers from utilization rates. You can even identify poor utilization rates and place staff on suitable training schemes to help them catch up, giving them an allowance to perform at a better level than before. A secondary advantage here is you’ll know your staff’s strengths and weaknesses, which is handy when you redistribute their skills to projects better suited to their ability.
• Accurately pinpointing highly sought-after skills and adding them to your inventory for demands without disrupting project progress.
• Getting cost-effective billable quotes from different resourcing types and distributing them in varying proportions by the value brought in.

Scroll on to the next section for the particulars you need to watch out for when playing around with your template.

Project Tracking Template:

Name: This variable is useful in separating projects by industry, so that the right staff are assigned it when the time comes

Team: This column can be used to consolidate skills and experience (by seniority) such that it is easy for staff from different departments to collaborate

Start/End dates: The duration for which the project runs which can be for days, weeks, months or even years at a stretch (as evidenced in construction, engineering service projects).

Status: This column indicates if the project is yet to start, on hold, completed or terminated (due to extenuating circumstances).

Task Type: This is a further breakdown of specific project activities which calls into action a mix of divergent skills. For example, a project to create a client’s website can be divided into web design, wireframing/user experience and coding, each of which differs by time and skills.

Completion %: This column tracks the progress of pending projects and levels it against original estimates.

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Reduce Resourcing Cost by 10-20% with Modern Resource Management Software

Booked Versus Actual Tab:

Billable hours: These are the hours your consultants price their efforts at, which can be reconciled against the monthly budgeted hours.

CostRate: This is the internal rate you set for individual consultants

Consultant: This column pertains to the staff whose estimated hours are to be booked on future projects.

Task Start/End Dates: If a project contains task interdependencies, often time overlaps occur between these events. Since each task can have separate complexities, entering their estimated start and finish times helps you give your clients a realistic timeline to deliver the project in its entirety.

Budgeted hours/month: These are a tally of the total hours projected for all projects.

TimeSheet tab

In this tab of the spreadsheet, you can expect to see an overview of the hours put in by your resources against which future efforts can be predicted for projects in the pipeline.

Resource type: Depending on the contract agreement in place, different hours are allotted to full-timers, part-timers, contractors and freelancers. While full-timers work the standard 40-45 hour/week, the remaining resourcing contracts are flexibly scheduled for lesser hours. Based on this, payscale would vary.

Sick leaves: Enter the number of sick/medical leaves taken.

Paid Leaves: This column includes company leaves and non-BAU activities such as training and support.
Hours worked/week: Here, your resources can enter their daily billable hours to ensure the project billing worth is squarely matched.

Total Pay: Pay will be calculated on a pro-rata basis based on the hours worked per week.

Days: This can be spread across the working month with the option for overtime work on weekends and non-core office hours.

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A Free Work Breakdown Structure Template with Gantt Chart View

While several versions of a project plan template are up for grabs in the market, you’d be hard-pressed to find one that collates your staff and project profile succinctly. Too often, one ends up overtaking the other by priority. The project plan template put up here remedies that by compiling three oft-used metrics in the project and resource management space alike.

As simple and convenient as spreadsheets are, they’re not intuitive enough to adapt to a rapidly evolving digital landscape. As your enterprise expands its reach, the sheer rise in staff numbers marrs your ability to store resourcing information accurately. Moreover, repetitive computations take up more of your time, leaving you precious little to devote to your daily routine.

And with the most basic security controls, anyone can edit spreadsheets, causing you to second-guess the information lying before you. Therefore, even with its efficiency and simplicity, a project plan template is merely a stopgap before the eventual shift to the analytical reports of an Enterprise Resource Management product suite. And with Saviom ERM, not only are you guaranteed an accurate overview of your resource health but you can also allocate work to different resourcing contracts, helping you reap value even as you can reduce resourcing cost. With chaos the industrial norm, wouldn’t you want to count on your workforce to deliver with a comprehensive solution by your side?

Did this post help you predict your project’s future in the present? Download your free project plan template today and tell us how you got on!